THE SOURCES OF WASHINGTON'S CHARM
Photograph by Maynard Owen Williams
A MIDSUMMER CROWD AT THE BATHING BEACH
Recreations afforded in West Potomac Park run the athletic gamut from polo, swimming,
boating, horseback riding, tennis, golf, and motoring to walking. Across the water is the
Bureau of Engraving and Printing, where the Government's paper money and its bonds and
stamps are made.
Uptown is a square, substantial home,
on a short and modest street, where Mar
shal Joffre on a memorable Sunday morn
ing earnestly made an appeal to the Amer
ican nation, through a group of newspaper
men, that this country send "just a hun
dred thousand or so soldiers" to France.
The doughty old warrior paused, as if
asking too much; the sun struck his face
and disclosed tears in his jolly eyes, as he
told how just a few thousand Americans
would refresh the spirit of France's war
wearied fighting men.
It was that appeal which caught the
country's imagination as no argument
had-and its result is immortal history.
FLOWER TIME IN WASHINGTON
Consider, now, less official aspects of
the Capital.
Springtime is flower time in Washing
ton. Balmy weather begins to brew
about mid-March; the first shoots of
crocus and tulip appear in flower beds
around the Capitol terrace, and from then
on, until late June, Washington becomes
as much a resort as is Miami in winter or
New England in summer.
The climax of the flower season is the
blooming of the famous Japanese cherry
trees in Potomac Park. Mrs. William
Howard Taft, then in the White House,
initiated the plan of planting the trees
about the Tidal Basin, and the mavor of
Tokyo cordially assisted.
Late afternoon and all day Sundays
during the "cherry-blossom time" the
footpath around the mirror-like basin is
crowded with pedestrians, and scores of
amateurs are clicking cameras, trying to
catch a bit of the tree-fringed shoreline
with the stalwart Washington Monument
shaft and that house of many windows,
the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, in
the background.
On a driveway beyond the trees, traffic
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